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Re: In what languages does your public library stock books?

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 9:31 pm
by Bao
We have Stadtbibliotheken and Landesbibliotheken. Both are public, but the Landesbibliotheken also are archives for the publications of the last decades.

In my Stadtbibliothek (... three cities) there were novels in English, French, Spanish, a few dozen in Russian and Turkish. Both in the section for adults as well as the section for children. Plus there were picture books in quite a number of languages - several dozen I would think. The selection would vary a bit, one had more audiobooks in English, for example. In general these libraries stock few non-fiction books in foreign languages.

In the SLUB (Sächsische Staats- und Landesbibliothek) they have many more languages present, as the library doubles as a university library so they have material for the language degrees, plus donations I assume. If I remember correctly they even have books published in minority Romance languages, novels in Korean, that kind of thing, a big section with Slavic language novels etc. It also has much more non-fiction.

Re: In what languages does your public library stock books?

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 10:01 pm
by Adrianslont
In my part of Sydney it's:

Arabic (newspaper, magazines and DVDs only)
Chinese
French
Greek
Indonesian
Polish
Russian
Spanish

Can you guess which Municipality that is?

For some reason I thought you were a Melbournite, Smallwhite.

Re: In what languages does your public library stock books?

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 10:35 pm
by CarlyD
In my small northern California library we have large sections for Spanish and Russian plus small sections for Mandarin and probably a few books in other languages. The "big" library in our main city has a good bit more but still the largest collection will be Spanish.

Re: In what languages does your public library stock books?

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 11:39 pm
by jeff_lindqvist
Our library carries novels in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, English, German, Dutch, Romanian, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Polish, BCMS, Greek, Latin, Romani, Persian, Kurdish, Dari, Arabic, Tigrinja, Amharic, Somali, Finnish, Meänkieli, Estonian, Saamic, Turkish, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese... and Esperanto.

Enough?

Re: In what languages does your public library stock books?

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 9:32 am
by tiia
Bao wrote: In the SLUB (Sächsische Staats- und Landesbibliothek) they have many more languages present, as the library doubles as a university library so they have material for the language degrees, plus donations I assume. If I remember correctly they even have books published in minority Romance languages, novels in Korean, that kind of thing, a big section with Slavic language novels etc. It also has much more non-fiction.


The SLUB got a quite huge donation of Finnish books, as there had been a small Finnish library, that donated all their 300 books, half of them in Finnish.

Re: In what languages does your public library stock books?

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 10:09 am
by verdastelo
I’m from Patiala. The city is fortunate to host a State Library, one of the three in Punjab (India). I’ve been a regular to the Musafir Memorial Central State Library for more than 10 years and have spoken to the staff there on several occasions. Here’s what I’ve learned from our conversations and my own observations:

  1. The library is home to between 135,000 and 150,000 books in four (or three, depending on whether you consider Hindi and Urdu different) languages: English, Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi.
  2. As far as shelf-space goes, between 50-60 percent is occupied by English books. Most of them are from the 1950s and 1960s. The remaining shelf-space is equally divided between Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu.
  3. All the Urdu books have been moved to a section which is kept locked most of the time. Although Urdu was a popular language in the 1950s and 1960s, few people can read it now. The last Urdu book I borrowed was covered in a millimeter of dust.
  4. The library has a little more than 20,000 members; not all of them are active. I have observed that most of the days, only between 50 and 100 people visit it.

That’s it.

PS: The figure of 150,000 books comes from this website: http://punjabnewsusa.com/2013/03/13/ਸੈਂ ... ਾਇਬ੍ਰੇਰੀ-ਦੀ/ . For some reason I couldn't link to it. It also says the government wants to sell it. Probably they want to create a temple of capital - a mall, a casino, a bank, or some stupid structure in its place.

Re: In what languages does your public library stock books?

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 10:59 am
by smallwhite
Adrianslont wrote:Can you guess which Municipality that is?


I don't remember seeing that combination so it should be a library I haven't been to (Horns. Chats. City. Burw. Wave. Hurt.). With such a large range it should be a major library and not too far from the City. With such a broad range it should be a hub kind of place. With those language it should be somewhere South. With no Vietnamese I'm ruling out Cabramatta. I want to say Parramatta but I'd expect more Asian languages there.

Bankstown?

:D That was fun :D I love libraries.

Re: In what languages does your public library stock books?

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 11:09 am
by smallwhite
Thank you for everyone's detailed answers. It's been really eye-opening! I didn't expect the libraries in so many places to be so multilingual. Lucky yous!

Re: In what languages does your public library stock books?

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 11:35 am
by Adrianslont
smallwhite wrote:
Adrianslont wrote:Can you guess which Municipality that is?


I don't remember seeing that combination so it should be a library I haven't been to (Horns. Chats. City. Burw. Wave. Hurt.). With such a large range it should be a major library and not too far from the City. With such a broad range it should be a hub kind of place. With those language it should be somewhere South. With no Vietnamese I'm ruling out Cabramatta. I want to say Parramatta but I'd expect more Asian languages there.

Bankstown?

:D That was fun :D I love libraries.


I'm glad you enjoyed that! :) Unfortunately, you didn't get it. But, yes, close to the city and indeed south of the city. The big clues are Indonesian and maybe French - it's Randwick.

Bankstown has Vietnamese and Arabic books, not just newspapers - a big settlement area for both of those groups.

Randwick has two large branches and at least one smaller one. AND they sell off the books that they take out of circulation very cheaply. I'm working my way through a tween vampire series in Indonesian at the moment and picked up 3 adult books for a dollar this week for when my reading age grows up.

Re: In what languages does your public library stock books?

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 12:36 pm
by jeff_lindqvist
I should perhaps add that of the novels in our... 30+ languages, the majority are in Swedish (possibly over 40 000), English (maybe 4000), German (700+), French (500+), Spanish (600+), Russian (200+), Polish (100+), Persian (500+), Arabic (800+) and Finnish (800+). Other languages might have only a handful of books.

Non-fiction, reference books etc. are mostly in Swedish and English (well over 100 000 in total). Maybe a few hundred books in other languages.